Seek and Destroy

Name: Seek and Destroy
Platform: PS2
Year: 2002
Players: Single player and splitscreen multiplayer
Developer: Barnhouse Effect
Publishers: Takara (JP), Conspiracy Entertainment (NA), Play It/Centresoft (EU)

Have you ever seen the film cars? If not, cars is based in a world where there are no humans, but instead sentient vehicles make up the population. Now imagine that, but with tanks. 

Part of the Choro Q series, seek and destroy is a tank shoot 'em up where you play as a talking, living tank, who's job is to save the Proton Kingdom from the evil forces of the Q-Stein empire. One of the quirky features of the Choro Q series is that all the vehicles are 'squashed' length-ways, giving them a toy-ish appearance similar to that of their real life toy counterparts. 

The game starts with the Protons making a last stand in their final town. After successfully defending the town, the player gains the ability to free-roam, talk to other tanks, and enter the shop and garage where they may freely purchase and equip modifications for their tank, including shell types, secondary weapons such as rocket launchers, and even change their tank hull all together, though your options will be limited at first due to a lack of money. For it's time, the customisation system is actually pretty in-depth. Remember, this game is 15 years old!

The map screen, where the player can start
missions and visit towns

The player can drive to the outer edges of the zone they are in, and will be transported to a map view of the three nations in the game; the Protons, the Q-Stein, and the Kingdom of Nibelia. When in this view, the player can drive to other towns, as well as to missions.

The game has multiple story paths, with different missions carrying you down each. The missions are quite unique, and some feature difficult bosses. As far as I was able to tell, there is no way to go back and do the other missions without making a new save. 

Tank selection

Along with the single player story, there are also split-screen party modes consisting of timed challenges, races and the likes. Here you can use pre-made tanks, or tanks made in the single player story.

The game has a wide selection of real world tanks, both modern an old. You'll find iconic tanks such as Churchils, Tigers, Marders, Abrams and more. I'm pretty sure there's even a SturmTiger

Second game opening sequence:

Links:

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seek_and_Destroy_(2002_video_game)